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Start giftingBlonde Roots
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Learn moreA provocative and "dizzying satire" (The New Yorker) that "boldly turns history on its head" (Elle) from the Man Booker Prize winning author of Girl, Woman, Other.
What if the history of the transatlantic slave trade had been reversed and Africans had enslaved Europeans? How would that have changed the ways that people justified their inhuman behavior? How would it inform our cultural attitudes and the insidious racism that still lingers today? We see this tragicomic world turned upside down through the eyes of Doris, an Englishwoman enslaved and taken to the New World, movingly recounting experiences of tremendous hardship and the dreams of the people she has left behind, all while journeying toward an escape into freedom.
A poignant and dramatic story grounded in provocative ideas, Blonde Roots is a genuinely original, profoundly imaginative novel.
Bernardine Evaristo was born in London to a Nigerian father and an English mother. Her first novel, Lara, won the EMMA (Ethnic Multicultural Media Awards) Best Book Award in 1999. A former Poet in Residence at the Museum of London, she won an Arts Council of Britain Writers' Award in 2000.
Reviews
A hugely imaginative tale that invites important debates, challenging fundamental perceptions of race, culture and history—Independent on SundayThis brilliant novel will fulfil [Evaristo's] purpose of making readers view the transatlantic slave trade with fresh eyes—The Times
A phenomenal book. It is so ingenious and so novel. Think The Handmaid's Tale meets Noughts and Crosses with a bit of Jonathan Swift and Lewis Carroll thrown in. This should be thought of as a feminist classic.—Women's Prize for Fiction Podcast
Reimagines past and present with refreshing humour and intelligence . . . human and real—Guardian
[Blonde Roots] is a powerful gesture of fearless thematic ownership by one of the UK's most unusual and challenging writers—Independent
As with a Swiftean satire, Evaristo's novel is powerful not for its fantastical elements but for its ability to bring home the horror of historical events—Financial Times Expand reviews